What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Welcoming Muslims into church

    islamic

    There’s currently a bit of a fuss going on in London because a vicar invited a group to have Muslim prayers inside his church.

    This is a fuss blown out of all proportion. What the Rev Giles Goddard, the vicar of St John’s Waterloo has done is unremarkable and the trouble seems to be coming from those who are also troubled by his offering to affirm gay couples, as much as anything to do with the Muslims.

    It seems important to state that I’ve offered Muslims the opportunity to hold worship in St Mary’s.

    A couple of years ago one of the local mosques was being refurbished and they needed somewhere to meet for Friday prayers for six weeks. A group from the mosque committee came to me to ask whether there was any possibility of them using St Mary’s Cathedral.

    I met with them and did indeed offer our space to them.

    In the end, they didn’t take up the offer as they were worried that we didn’t have enough floorspace for them. (Not the first time I’ve cursed the immovable pews).

    The things worth noting here are these:

    • Every Christian I spoke to about this wanted it to go ahead as part of the basic hospitality that we think is part of our faith.
    • Every Muslim I spoke to at the time spoke to me about precedents from history when Christians had been offered sanctuary in mosques and protection from Muslim communities whilst they worshipped there.
    • There was never controversy over this at all.

    Related to this is the fact that I’ve twice asked Islamic Scholars (one Shia and one Sunni) to give a reading from the Qur’an during our carol service here in St Mary’s. Being surrounded by members of different Islamic communities in this part of Glasgow, the diverse congregation gathered to celebrate Christ’s birth in St Mary’s seemed both delighted and entranced to discover that members of another faith held the birth of of Jesus to Mary in the highest honour. Again, on each occasion when this happened there was delight and joy all around and not the slightest hint of controversy. The most recent occasion involved a sung recitation from the Qur’an and then a translation.  The sound still rings in my ears when I see local Muslims in the street.

    It is worth noting in passing that the Islamic group that Giles Goddard invited into St John’s was unusual in that it welcomes men and women to pray together – something a lot of good Anglicans might be inclined to say was a good idea.

    And another thing. I’ve heard on the grapevine that a mixed group of young people, Muslim and Christian was present in Liverpool Cathedral one year on Ash Wednesday when Justin Welby was the Dean. To some surprise, the Muslim young people came forward to receive the ashes on their foreheads along with everyone else.

    I believe that the quick thinking Dean (now the Archbishop of Canterbury) said something like: “May the God of Abraham which is both my God and yours bless you and keep you safe this day” and firmly put the ash on all their heads. Such things are the everyday stuff of ministry. Entirely uncontroversial and a delight and a parable of the way things should be, to all involved.

    Anyone wanting to throw stones at Giles Goddard over this might find that they bounce off and hit the Archbishop of Canterbury instead.

    And those who want to stir up trouble between faiths, motivated by latent homophobia, should look deep into their souls before they next try to look the God of love in the eye.

    Save

    ,

8 responses to “Assisted Dying – Why I’ve changed my mind”

  1. BobS Avatar
    BobS

    You lucidly illustrated an example of a family seeking to pressurise someone to influence the process of death. But what was possibly missing was the voice of the person nearing death. Where was their perspective, their reasoning? Assisted Dying starts and driven by the person dying. They are the ones who, with mental capacity, take those steps, if necessary, to expedite death at that final stage. They, together with medical experts, make those decisions.
    The examples cited refer to a family desperate for a skiing holiday and your concern of funeral directors making money through direct cremations.
    I fully agree with your desire for a better palliative care system. Having witnessed their work it is amazing. But that is another argument. To conflate the two dismisses the voice of those seeking assisted dying.
    Your concern over assisted dying seems to be interwoven by a call for improved palliative care and a demise in direct cremations.

    Reply
    1. Rev Owain Jones Avatar
      Rev Owain Jones

      Respectfully, Bob S, I think you’re overlooking the one thing that struck me very forcefully from this incident. I’ve always felt profoundly uneasy at the likelihood – I’d say ‘moral certainty’ – that the voice of the dying will in some cases be influenced, even swayed, by the dying person’s assumptions, inferences or intuitions (correct or not) about the needs of those closest to them, and even their desires. These desires might not be articulated, or even correctly guessed – but they might, and as soon as the dying person is subject to them, they are, by definition, influenced in their decision. At that point, Assisted Dying can no longer be said “to start and driven by the person dying.” I’ve been there for a long time – but what I suddenly realized reading Kelvin Holdsworth’s post, was that there’s a much darker issue here, and it relates to a fundamental principle to which I’ve always adhered. Please bear with me, and entertain for a moment an analogy which you might consider to be extreme, and which I’d be appalled to hear deployed by the religiously fanatical opponents of Assisted Dying. It’s this. I have always been opposed to the death penalty for a number of reasons, but very prominent among them is that it takes to an extreme the testing of a fundamental principle of justice (which I know I’m modifyng here to make the analogy a better fit, and of course, you’re free to take issue with that): “It is better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one innocent person be punished unjustly.” I’m aware that there’s a very significant separation between that and this, but I don’t believe it amounts to ‘clear blue water’. Let me try and articulate my conviction in a reasonable way, for you to consider, even if you reject it. I think that there’s a huge danger inscribed in legislation which will, of a moral certainty, permit circumstances in which unwilling dying individuals give assent under pressure to the active premature termination of their lives. This holds true even if a hundred times as many individuals assent freely, and even actively seek, such termination. One of the things that always made me uneasy about the Vulcans was the assertion that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. There seems to me to be no way in any legislation to protect the needs and rights of the few in this issue. At the very least, I think that needs to be acknowledged openly by proponents of Assisted Dying. If we’re about to be taken across a Rubicon, I believe that everyone, on both sides of the decision, need to acknowledge that. (Incidentally, I completely agree with Kevin Holdsworth’s horror (I hope I’m expressing that fairly) at ‘Direct Cremations’ and the way they’re advertised. They seem to me to be open profiteering from the death-phobic culture in which we’re immersed. I fear that the impulses behind Assisted Dying as currently advocated may be a good-faith manifestation of the inability of society to look at the full actuality of human mortality and the relationship between life and death. I may be deluding myself, but I think I’d say that even if I were an atheist.

      Reply
      1. BobS Avatar
        BobS

        Rev Owain, thank you for your response. I fear your analogy was stretched to fit your argument, and, apologies if my education lacked in this quarter, where the reference to Vulcans was applicable.
        If we are concerned that a very small percentage will be wronged, then many practices today should be stopped. The statistical error you describe will always be possible, albeit minimised as much as possible.
        The proposed law tries to cater for such concerns. What appears to be the argument against assisted dying is that it is not error proof.
        If a person who is deemed to have mental capacity with less than six months to live, with suitable medical provision, seeks to alleviate their suffering, and is capable of themselves administering the medication to ultimately ease that pain, then their voice has been heard.
        I also would hope that palliative care continues to improve but that is a separate argument, as are direct cremations, and now the cost of the funeral to families. These arguments are all used to conflate the underlying issue of assisted dying.

        Reply
    2. Val Dobson Avatar
      Val Dobson

      You are wrong to connect funeral companies’ promotion of Direct Cremation with the push for assisted dying. Nowadays, many families simply cannot afford a “proper” funeral / cremation, and funeral grants come nowhere to covering the the costs. The funeral companies are simply responding to customer needs.

      Reply
      1. Kelvin Avatar
        Kelvin

        I’m happy to speak out about funerals being too expensive. However, it is manifestly not the case taht funeral companies are simply responding to customer needs. If they did they would promote these as being about price. They don’t – they promote them as being about not causing a fuss, which is the point I’m making here.

        Reply
  2. Nigel Kenny Avatar
    Nigel Kenny

    Thank you for your wise and persuasive words – may they influence MSPs to vote against the Bill.

    Reply
  3. Chriatine McIntosh Avatar
    Chriatine McIntosh

    Thanks for this, Kelvin – I’ve been thinking more about this as contemporaries begin to vanish from this life.

    Reply
  4. Helen Leslie Avatar
    Helen Leslie

    Thank you Kelvin. I am someone who has spent the majority of my working life caring for people at the end of their lives. You said exactly what I would want to.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • What is mission?

    I’m currently engaged in an interesting discussionette with Anne Tomlinson and AKMA over on Anne’s ministry development blog. I’ve just said this: …when we try to think about mission in Scotland we try to think about doing something with those who already come to church, who are generally baptised, who are generally communicants. We try…

  • How to write a blog #1

    Well, having looked at how to read a blog, I suppose the obvious thing to do is now put something up about how to write one. The answer I’d give anyone is to use WordPress. Its simple, lovely and oh so easy to use. You don’t need to know anything about how to make webpages.…

  • How to read blogs

    I posted a couple of links yesterday to some newish blogs and suggested you add them to your blog reader. I know that some folk will not know what that means, so I’ll explain here. I’m often surprised by the number of people who say, “I don’t know where you find the time to read…

  • Blogroll

    Have restored the list of blogs I read on the right hand sidebar. (Scroll down). Notable new entries are John McCluckie Alison Peden Malcolm Round All of them are producing quality blogging and all deserve to be added to your blog reader. Wish Malcolm allowed comments and that John’s blog had a comments rss feed.…